dehorsvsdevonsWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: dehors is a adverb, devons is a noun, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“dehors” is an adverb and “devons” is a noun - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#935
“dehors” frequency rank
#2,314
“devons” frequency rank
3249
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature dehors devons
Definition À l’extérieur. Pluriel de devon.

Where the eye mixes dehors and devons

Muted = shared; highlighted = the visual trap. They share 4 letters in sequence.

6 ch
dehors
6 ch
devons

Visual trap between dehors and devons

These two trip readers on the page rather than in the ear: dehors is \də.ɔʁ\ while devons is \də.vɔ̃\. Spoken aloud the problem disappears. In writing it persists, because they share most of their letters but differ in 2 positions, and the parts of speech differ too (adverb vs noun), which is usually the fastest check. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 3249, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

dehors is recorded at frequency rank #935, classified as anadv, pronounced \də.ɔʁ\. devons is at rank #2,314, tagged as anoun, pronounced \də.vɔ̃\.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 3249, this pair ranks #434,458 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of dehors vs devons

Shared letters: deos. Private to "dehors": hr. Private to "devons": nv.

"dehors" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC  ·  "devons" · 6 letters · shape CVCVCC

Known mistypes of this pair

  • dehorsddehors · dehhors · dehorrs · dehorss · dehosr · dehros · deohrs · dheors
  • devonsddevons · deovns · devnos · devonns · devonss · devosn · devvons · dveons

Frequently Asked Questions

Is swapping "dehors" for "devons" ever safe?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "dehors" is an adverb and "devons" a noun, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
Frequency check: "dehors" vs "devons" - which ranks higher?
"dehors" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #935 in our French list, against #2,314 for "devons". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

After this comparison

Eye-level mix-up between "dehors" and "devons" is sorted above. Next: full entries or other pairs that share a letter shape.

  • Full dictionary entry for "dehors" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "devons" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #434,458 of 440,172 scored French confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "dehors" and "devons" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "devins vs devons". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #434,458 of 440,172 scored French pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list